| When information overload occurs, an individual consumes information at the expense of other information. Advertising avoidance, or banner blindness, is a protective mechanism that can be triggered when an individual receives too high an informational load. This study uses methods developed from information overload theory, selective attention studies, information entropy and information redundancy to seek the connection between information overload and banner blindness. In aiming to measure the overall effect that these two phenomena have on brand awareness and individual's ability to recall an ad from a web browsing session, this study relies on prior work in the area of information overload, banner blindness, brand awareness, and ad recall. The researcher has measured a browsing session in which two groups of participants are engaged in a task-oriented browsing session containing either high or low levels of information. It was found that high levels of information in an online environment could reduce the likelihood of noticing or recalling the contents of online advertisements. |
